Ravi S. Achrol

Marketing in the network economy

As the twenty-first century dawns, marketing is poised for revolutionary changes in its organizational context, as well as in its relationship with customers. Driven by a dynamic and knowledge-rich...

Contracts, Norms, and Plural Form Governance

The organization of interfirm exchanges has become of critical importance in today’s business environment. Many scholars have criticized the inadequacies of legal contracts as mechanisms for governing exchange, especially in the face of uncertainty and dependence. Other scholars argue that it is not the contracts per se but the social contexts in which they are embedded that determine their effectiveness. This study investigates the performance implications of governance structures involving contractual agreements and relational social norms, individually and in combination (plural form) under varying conditions and forms of transactional uncertainty and relationship-specific adaptation. Hypotheses are developed and tested on a sample of 396 buyer-seller relationships. The results provide support for the plural form thesis—increasing the relational content of a governance structure containing contractual agreements enhances performance when transactional uncertainty is high, but not when it is low. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.

Assessing reseller performance from the perspective of the supplier

The objective of the authors’ study was to develop a reliable and valid scale to assess reseller performance from the perspective of the supplier. To specify the domain of reseller performance, fou...

Legal and social safeguards against opportunism in exchange

A considerable literature in marketing, economics, and law has emphasized the organizational structures and governance approaches employed by participants to enhance their exchange relationships and safeguard against the hazards of opportunism. The age-old mechanism of protecting against opportunism is the legal contract. Various literatures have attacked the inadequacies of contract in the context of complex, modern day exchange relationships. Some theorists have argued for the superiority of social mechanisms of control while others have been skeptical towards their use. This paper proposes that both legal contracts and social safeguards are useful means of mitigating opportunism. However, they rarely occur in isolation in modern exchanges and the interesting questions about their governance properties have to do with their interaction effects. This article employs a behavioral simulation to empirically examine the individual and combined effects of contract and relational norm safeguards against opportunism directly and in the context of asymmetric commitments by exchanging parties.

Network Organization and Systems Competition: A Marketing Analysis

Network organization and systems competition challenge competition policy and antitrust law. Networks can be powerful engines of marketing and innovation, but they can also function in ways that raise competition questions and antitrust concerns. Drawing on the marketing literature, the authors explain the nature and competitive behavior of firms operating in and competing through networks. Key questions for understanding and analyzing marketing networks in competition policy and antitrust law are discussed. The article adds marketing insights to the growing dialogue on network forms of business organization and systems competition. It also demonstrates the benefits of including knowledge from marketing and related disciplines in competition policy and antitrust analysis.

External Dependency and Evolution in Marketing Channels

The literature on marketing channel evolution appears to lack an explanatory mechanism for understanding channel processes in complex and changing market environments. This paper examines the nature of external dependencies of channel actors and the strategies for managing these in the face of environmental uncertainty. It shows that channel control and power locates at the level best able to manage external dependencies and thus absorb uncertainty. It shows that complex channel structures evolve in response to increasingly complex and dynamic environments.